Professor’s Eyes Are on the Prize When Mason Engineering’s Qi Wei sees people with vision troubles, she knows there is more to the problem than meets the eye.
WE HOPE THE NEUROBIOMEDICAL MODEL WE ARE DEVELOPING WILL HELP DOCTORS BETTER DETERMINE HOW BEST TO TREAT STRABISMUS. ––Qi Wei, associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering
She researches strabismus, which is misaligned crossed eyes. “When people have strabismus, their eyes don’t line up to look at the same place at the same time,” says Wei, an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering and a winner of Mason’s Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning’s 2020 Teaching Excellence Award. One or both eyes may turn in, out, up, or down. A prevalent problem, especially with children, strabismus affects 18 million people in the United States. “Strabismus can be debilitating because people with the condition develop double vision, blurred vision, eyestrain, or other symptoms impairing daily activities.” Wei and three other principal investigators from different universities are creating a data-driven computer model of the eye for diagnosing and treating strabismus with almost $1.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health.
30 VOLGENAU SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING ANNUAL REPORT 2020
